My family and I reside in Bow, and I am deeply concerned for the economic and environmental costs of the Merrimack Station. New Hampshire electricity ratepayers are paying coal-based power producers in advance to be “on call,” and we really shouldn’t have to.
Why? Because ISO-New England pays companies like Granite Shore Power (owner of the Bow coal plant) a lot of money to be able to generate power quickly during times of peak load, like the coldest and hottest days of the year. (ISO-NE is an independent, not-for-profit corporation responsible for keeping electricity flowing across the six New England states. It runs the markets where participants buy and sell wholesale electricity.)
From January 2018 to May 2023, ISO-NE will pay more than $400 million just to make sure it can rely on the plants to produce power in periods of peak demand. And that’s in addition to what it earns for the electricity they actually produce. Merrimack Station in Bow received payments totaling $50.7 million in 2018, just for being there.
Since New Hampshire ratepayers (that’s us!) pay ISO-NE to run the grid, it means we are paying for these coal-fired generating stations. We are giving these coal generators “free money” just to be “on call.”
This is a fossil-fuel subsidy. If the coal plant did not receive this money, it would probably not be cost-effective to continue to use coal to generate the amount of electricity they actually produce.
It’s time to stop paying coal plants in Bow to do nothing. It’s time to stop using coal to generate electricity.
MARY FITE
Bow